


Favors

by soaringrachel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: American Politics, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringrachel/pseuds/soaringrachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dany/Sansa American politics AU. Aspirational Westerner Dany spends way too much money on presents for basically-a-Kennedy Sansa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Favors

“Gifts,” Dany’s friends tell her, when she asks how you get someone to like you. (So she’s never had to do this before! So she’s naive!)

So, gifts. 

Dany can do gifts. She’s good at gifts. (“Good at receiving them,” a voice within her mutters, but no, she can do this.)

She gets her jewelery, at first. Little leaves made of emeralds, real ones, that gleam in her ears—it may be inappropriate, but Dany can afford it and Sansa looks good in them. She wears them, but she doesn’t say anything about it, so Dany stares at them against her copper hair, and next she gets her copper, flat bracelets set with turquoise she buys in one of those upscale museum shops when she’s in Los Angeles. Dany gives them to her /on Valentine’s Day/, and Sansa just wears them with that secret little smile on her face and doesn’t say a word. She wears the rhinestone bracelet that economics grad student gave her, too.

She’s a Stark, Dany tells herself, and it doesn’t matter what a good match you’d be, you’re a girl. They would be a good match, Dany knows; she saw Sansa when she was with Joffrey, saw how much of whatever power he had on campus was really her; hell, she saw Sansa on TV when her dad was running for VP. She’s good at this stuff even if she doesn’t want to be, exactly the sort of person Dany needs by her side. Exactly the sort of person, sure, and beautiful, and kind, and Dany looks up when her birthday is on Facebook and makes dinner reservations.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” Dany tells her, and Sansa looks frightened. “I mean it,” Dany says, “You’ll go to dinner with me.”

When Sansa still looks nervous, Dany wrinkles her brow. “It won’t kill you,” she says. “I’m not going to poison the food.”

Sansa laughs, then. “It’s not as unlikely as you might think.”

Dany takes Sansa to her favorite Mexican place, which is apparently a mistake, because Sansa picks at her food and is untalkative. Dany doesn’t blame her for that, actually—she’s realizing how long it’s been since she’s had a dinner conversation about anything that wasn’t politics. But Sansa looks out of place, off her game—she often does, Dany realizes, and she imagines as she often does Sansa as First Lady of California, Sansa doing tours and talking the people, Sansa kissing Dany goodnight the first time they see each other all day, and the Sansa in Dany’s imagination stands a little straighter, smiles a little brighter, reminds her of the Sansa Stark she watched on TV and imagined having a daughter like that one day, having a wife like that one day. She takes Sansa out for ice cream afterward and Sansa brightens, buys lemon sorbet. Dany pays, but Sansa reaches into her purse on instinct and Dany spots her planner in there, blue cover and Disney princess stickers, and God, she’s not sure if she’s more in love with this girl or what she could mean to her.

Dany hates Washington. Dany will deal with it when she’s President, but she plans to do so as little as possible before then; Washington is hot but it’s somehow not the right kind of heat, muggy dirt paths on the mall nothing like shimmering Southern California pavement. Her brother would frown, but Los Angeles really is home to Dany; it took being away to figure that out. But this summer she has the internship in Congress, and she has better Mexican food than you can find near school, and she has Sansa, when she can get away.

The heat does have an advantage—it puts Sansa in a confessional mood. She hates the President, she tells Dany, but Cersei insists she live with them, an honored guest in the White House, and how can she refuse? “And anyway, it’s the closest I’m getting to home,” she says wistfully—she doesn’t want to go to Tennessee, and her older brother’s place is a one-room apartment without an inch of space free from campaign detritus. 

She claims she doesn’t understand politics, and it’s true that what Dany does confuses her, but she understands other things better than Dany does herself—the politics of people, not just in Washington but at school, or anywhere. /If it were her in love with me/, Dany thinks bitterly, /she’d have had me in days/. Because soft confessions or none, Sansa doesn’t touch Dany, doesn’t indicate they’re anything more than friends, and friends of convenience at that. (She doesn’t touch much of anyone, Dany notices, and it gives her hope. But little else does.)

She gets moony and mopey when they’ve been back at school for a few weeks, and she tries to bake Sansa a cake; lemon, she remembers, from the birthday sorbet. She squeezes fourteen seeds into the batter and manages to burn half and leave the other half runny, and she gets lemon juice in a cut on her finger and ends up crying and drinking a bottle of cheap white wine one of her housemates bought and making a very stupid decision, which is this: she decides to get Sansa a horse.

The horse is chestnut brown, with big sad brown eyes. Dany reflects that she doesn’t actually know that Sansa knows how to ride, and she allows herself to imagine teaching her for one minute before she shakes her head, quickly, and then nods, says she’ll buy it. It’s not something Dany does often, buys something big like this, despite the fact she can certainly afford it; it’s one of her more stupid decisions, but she’s desperate, because she went on another date last night and there’s no one for her but Sansa. So she’s bought her a horse, and she’s stabled it, and she’s texted Sansa, “meet me this address,” and now she is waiting.

Sansa walks into the stables less nervous than Dany was fearing, if not as thrilled as she was hoping, and then she sees the chestnut and she breathes in, “ahh.”

“She’s lovely,” Sansa says, and Dany, feeling like she’s stuck in a bad romantic comedy (but Sansa likes bad romantic comedies, so maybe it’s okay) says, “She’s yours.”

Sansa reaches out a hand and strokes the horse’s cheek. “I haven’t ridden a horse since I was tiny,” she says, and then seems to remember herself—“You can’t, Dany.”

Dany smiles now, and says, “I already did,” and she can almost see Sansa battling between refusing and accepting, and what she really wants wins out—she runs her hand through the chestnut’s mane. “Does she have a name?” Sansa asks, and Dany glances at the papers. “You can change it,” she says, “but she’s called Lady,” and Sansa stares at the horse for a second and then kisses Dany, full on the lips.

“It worked,” is Dany’s first thought, and then “Holy Hell this is nice,” and then she’s caught up in long red hair under her fingers and soft pink lips against hers and she’s not thinking about too much. “I love you,” she blurts when Sansa lets go of her, and Sansa raises an eyebrow. “What, Daenerys Targaryen in love? I thought you only thought about strategy.”

“Luckily,” Dany says, ducking in to kiss her again, “it’s in our favor.”


End file.
